CPPE: Portraying Dangote Refinery as a Monopolistic Threat Is Simplistic

• Says import liberalisation pathway to de‑industrialisation

The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) said yesterday that framing the Dangote Refinery as a monopolistic threat to justify import liberalisation of refined petroleum products is overly simplistic and could lead Nigeria toward de‑industrialisation.

CPPE noted that Nigeria has recently seen one of the most significant industrial investments in Africa with the establishment of the Dangote Refinery, and that modular refinery projects across the country should be strategically supported, celebrated, and strengthened.

It warned that the growing push for unrestricted importation of petroleum products comes at a time when Nigeria should be consolidating domestic refining capacity and accelerating its industrialisation agenda.

According to CPPE, competition should be fostered not by promoting imports but by encouraging additional domestic refining investment.

Chief Executive Officer of CPPE, Dr. Muda Yusuf, expressed these views in a press statement titled “Import Liberalisation and The Risk of Deindustrialisation in Nigeria.”

Yusuf said the refinery has not prevented other investors from entering the sector.

He stated, “Attempts to portray Dangote Refinery as a monopolistic threat are simplistic, fundamentally flawed and grossly unfair. It did not cause the collapse of state‑owned refineries. It simply undertook an extraordinary industrial investment at a scale unprecedented in Africa.”

“Nigeria should not demonise audacious investment, industrial courage, scale and risk appetite. A country that undermines transformative investment sends deeply troubling signals to both domestic and foreign investors.”

He pointed out that scale created competitiveness, lowered unit costs, deepened value chains, strengthened economic resilience, and should not be criminalised.

He added that a large market share, in itself, was not evidence of monopoly abuse and could be regulated through competition laws and antitrust institutions to prevent abuse of market power.

CPPE said an indiscriminate liberalisation regime within a structurally fragile economy is not a pathway to competitiveness but to de‑industrialisation.

It stated, “It was indiscriminate import liberalisation that precipitated the collapse of many once‑thriving domestic industries, including tyre manufacturing giants such as Dunlop and Michelin, as well as textile mills, battery manufacturing firms, automobile assembly plants, pharmaceutical companies and electronics assembly industries.”

CPPE said many of these enterprises were not destroyed by inefficiency alone, but by a policy environment that exposed domestic producers to unfair external competition amid crippling infrastructure deficits, high energy costs, weak logistics systems, prohibitive financing costs, and multiple regulatory burdens.

Yusuf said, “This is why the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could become deeply disruptive for domestic manufacturers if urgent and deliberate steps are not taken to strengthen local production capabilities, improve competitiveness and address the structural impediments confronting Nigerian industries.”

“Trade liberalisation without competitiveness is not integration; it is deindustrialisation.”

Yusuf also said Nigeria’s recent experience with food importation illustrated the dangers of excessive liberalisation.

He said, “Large‑scale food imports disrupted local agricultural value chains, weakened incentives for domestic farmers and undermined investments in local production. Many Nigerian farmers are yet to recover from the disruptions created by those policy measures. The refining sector must not be subjected to the same policy error. Temporary import advantages should never be permitted to destroy long‑term domestic industrial capabilities.”

He said Nigeria could not achieve meaningful industrialisation without deliberate and sustained support for domestic production through strategic protection, policy consistency, strong domestic value chains, support for local investors and reduction in import dependence.

Yusuf said, “No economy becomes prosperous by importing what it can produce domestically. The future of Nigeria’s economic resilience lies in production, refining, manufacturing and value addition and not in the perpetuation of import dependence.”

“Nigeria must, therefore, decide whether it wishes to build a production economy or remain trapped within a consumption economy. History has repeatedly shown that nations which neglect domestic production eventually weaken their currencies, compromise economic sovereignty and expose themselves to severe external vulnerabilities.”

According to him, prosperous economies are built on production, refining, manufacturing, value addition and the strengthening of domestic productive capacity.

He said countries that became excessively dependent on imports inevitably exported jobs, weakened domestic industries, eroded local investments, and mortgaged their economic sovereignty.

“Nigeria must, therefore, avoid drifting into a policy regime that undermines domestic production in the name of competition or liberalisation,” he said.

Yusuf said every serious economy protects its strategic sectors, which was the reason the United States was deploying tariffs and industrial subsidies to support manufacturing competitiveness while China was aggressively protecting its strategic industries.

He said self‑reliance was not economic isolationism but economic pragmatism anchored on national interest.

Yusuf explained, “It is the deliberate strengthening of domestic productive capacity in order to reduce vulnerability to external shocks and reinforce long‑term economic resilience. A country that cannot refine its own petroleum products despite being a major crude oil producer exposes itself to profound economic vulnerability. Energy security is national security.”

“A nation that persistently imports what it should ordinarily produce locally gradually weakens its productive base, destroys industrial capabilities and compromises long‑term economic stability. Therefore, the current policy conversation around petroleum product imports appears fundamentally inconsistent with Nigeria’s industrial aspirations.”